Golden blonde strands of hair swept around the woman’s face, silken locks licking along her jaw and down to the swell of her breasts, bouncing imperceptibly as she walked. Cool, calm strides, long legs curving from under the short and flouncy black skirt, bouncing with each firm sway of her hips. Her torso was tightly contained within a black leather corset lined along the tops and along the boning in crimson, ribbons tied in back to put a strong pronunciation on her waist, ample breasts spilling from the top.
Her boots were comfortable, black leather flats, military in style, cutting off mid-calf allowing for the full ease of movement in her confident swagger. She turned down Murder Row, her eyes glowing brighter as it adjusted to the relative dark, peering for some sense of friend or foe, her hands instinctively finding the hilts of her silver and black engraved daggers hung to her side. She marches down the cobblestone road, veering to the right and sitting on the cold hardness, her back pressed sternly against the wooden pole.
She fluttered her eyes partially closed, other senses heightened as her breathing became slow and regular, shallow due to the corset. The Row was quiet at this hour, most of the crime and villainy not taking place just after the sun rises. In the peace and tranquility she was able to gather her thoughts and plan for the day ahead as she vanished from the sight of any onlookers or spies that may stumble across her.
Her dreams were still causing her restlessness and she spent much of her day in recovery. There was a schedule to what she did most days – wake up along side Maglin, screw, eat, head to Silvermoon and watch those around her, then head to the Row and, she would say, meditate. Much of her time was spent in this contemplative state as she planned – for the future, for disaster, for the Tribe, for her family. For herself. The problem with having adopted so many identities over the year, so easily sliding from one persona to the next is the fluidity becomes troublesome when you wish to remain solid.
It becomes slightly more troublesome when you had been sober for the last five months for the first time in… centuries. Had it been centuries? She counted back along her years, passed the rebuilding of Silvermoon, passed its destruction, passed Stromguard and Eversong and Silvermoon the Ghostlands and the Jail and Dalaran. How long had it all been? Her life was cut into sections, into pieces, each of them encompassing the equivalent of a human adult’s life. How many of those that she had loved or thought she loved are now dead?
Idly her mind wandered back to Dalaran, the first time, before the fall. The Academy. Her self-conscious attempts at finding herself within those magical walls. The couple… she could barely even remember their names now, and yet the impact they had on her own lifestyle still ran a scar through her. She blames them for the insecurity and doubt that still lay deep below the surface, below the confidence and self assurance and awareness. That little pin sized hole of fear that she will once more be abandoned without concern.
Anjasa was aging. Edging upon her own mortality and, though she figured she could still have another century or two ahead of her, lingering doubts and insecurity plagued at her mind – worries of ending time and wasted pasts, of closure. Of contentment. Anjasa Vilelight is everything – a combination of everything she wanted to be. Jennek without the anger, without the madness, without the lust for blood and assault and violence. Or, at least, that’s what she told herself. Her nightmares told another story, of course, of what lay just below the surface in the middle aged elf.
She’d go back and revise history. Remember the things she’s done and neglected to do and wanted to do and didn’t and make scant nips and tucks, folding the pieces in on itself. It was something she had always done, and part of what made her remoulding so effective. When she met Jumwa, she knew, her life was nothing but villainy and corruption and cold heartedness. The pieces were hard and jagged, and the tenderness was cut out from the folds of time, omitted in the interest of becoming in his image.
There was no marriage, no love, no golden tenderness. There was no librarian Rajani, sitting in the stacks of books and reading soft core romance novels with her heart fluttering as the man swept the woman off her feet. There was no loving husband, bringing her lunch every day and listening with wrapt attention to her tales of library drama, his blue eyes watching with doting attention on his darling wife.
She was so soft, then. So creative and attentive and… calm. There was a stillness in her life, an inner peace that she had not known before. She would write and sketch and cook and prepare, and her days were spent so slowly; without a rush. And when she met Jumwa, that life was gone. Any lingering bits of it were replaced with the aftermath, of the fact that she couldn’t handle the peace and the serenity and the calm. That she couldn’t handle the monogamy and the child’s cries and falling into the arms of her loving husband’s arms every night, feeling the same body pressed against her form day after day.
To lack the anticipation of the fight, of the danger, of the daring. Her writing became darker. No more about swooning love tales, they were grittier and darker and focussed less on the man romancing the woman and more on him taking her. Force. Darkness. Drugs and alcohol. Scandal. Fear. She would hide these novels from her good natured husband, his pure heart and soul.
His wife had died giving birth to their child three years before he met Anjasa. Well, Rajani erstwhile. He was mournful and deep and came to read at the library’s poetry nights, swathed in black from head to toe with his auburn hair waving down his shoulders, and introspective goatee hiding his weak chin. His voice was deep and melodic, his words true and full of sorrow and depth. Rajani would listen to him with desire and longing to console, to mother, to comfort.
She was dressed modestly, albeit carefully, the day she actually summoned the courage to speak with him. It seemed silly to her, at the moment, to have those butterflies in her stomach after all she’d done and all she’s been through. But then, those other times, it wasn’t really an option to be nervous. A cream blouse, modest in cut, high collared and overly formal though it was a pretty material that clung to her frame in a flattering manner. Her tan skirt reached the floor with a delicate flow, the material light and springy and covering her modest chocolate brown heels.
Her legs felt like jelly after he finished speaking and she tentatively rose from her chair and began to make her way passed the throngs (she’d use the word throngs, even when the poetry readings saw less than twenty people most evenings) of listeners, all dressed in similarly neutral and dank colours. Her hair was piled high on her head, curled tendrils poking out of her formal bun. Her lips were stained a stern cerise, her eyes smoked in an ashen manner to bring out the brilliant blue of her iris.
Though her mannerisms were more reserved and chary than in the years passed, the look of confidence and assurance still clung to her, even through her unsure parade to the front of the room. A slender finger slowly reached to the man’s broad shoulder, tapping it with a light manner, her head lowering bashfully. Her eyes raised to meet his, demurely; after all, that was what creative men wanted, wasn’t it? Demureness, calmness, bashfulness. She felt all of these things, sliding into the role like a glove, despite the fact that she was less aware of her chameleon nature at that point.
He looked down at her, although he was not much taller than she. She noticed there were lines in the corner of his eyes, and along the his cheeks, a sign of jubilance. Her posture lightened softly at his gentle smile, nonetheless she still did not raise her head to meet him, so enraptured in playing the role of the shy damsel, waiting in distress for her prince to save her. Her voice was still slightly hoarse from the years of working in the bars, though it only managed to deepen it into a sensual growl rather than cause it to scratch and ache.
She fluttered her lashes at him and gave slow smiles and moved closer to him in a display of interest as she gushed about his work, about how deep and intriguing his poems were. How they drew the reader in and held them, not releasing them until the final stanza an then they sat enrapt and wishing he would continue speaking. He took all this in good nature, a blush against his pale cheeks as she continued on until she lead to a rambling stop, her eyes darting from his.
They went to coffee that evening, to a late night shop inhabited by hipsters and wannabes, talking about their art and how things just weren’t as they should be for one reason or another. The tucked into the back booth and Zach, short for Zachrius, told her of his wife with the longing sorrow that laced his poems, and of their toddler daughter, Cere, short for Cereleun. He was a fan of colours, Zach was, and turned out to be quite an accomplished painter in some circles. The poetry, he said, was a release to stop from turning his paintings shades of grey.
He asked of her name, as all did. It didn’t sound quite elven with the hard sounds and the obscure ending, but she said it meant introspect in a dead language and he accepted that. Her parents were of the arcane, she further explained in the rare glimpse of truth, and they were both very interested in scrying and in dealing with the dead. They sent her to Dalaran to study and, omitting a century or two from her life, she ended up in the Silvermoon City Library, pining over handsome and aging poets.
They went back to her place after the drinks with promise of wine and of her exposing some of her tenderest parts to him via her own sketches and scraps of paper and work that sprawled over her furniture in a, one would be gentle to say, lived in manner. Clothes and books and paper littered almost everywhere, granted it had been picked up and shoved and hidden in some manner or another, though not with any care. Introspective and aging poets with goatees and dead wives like a bit of eccentric in their women at first. So they can appear useful and then to seem accomplished when they break them of their nasty habits. No matter the man, it’s good to make them feel useful.
The fell into a disorganized and clumsy attempt at kissing and teenaged groping before parting for the evening, their minds and bodies in a disarray, blushed and eager and anticipating the moment that they would be available to explore one another more fully.
Nice girls don’t go all the way on the first date.
She went to his house the next week in order to meet little Cere who lived up to her namesake with the brightest of blue of everything. Her eyes, her clothes, her room, her bows. Everything was a shade or another – as was his house. It was a small cottage, comfortable and near the lake, with a large plot of land. He had some success in paintings for the inns and the palace, but he felt a life of modest means would continue to inspire his art and works.
It was a fine quel’dorei house, filled with soothing and homey smells. In the years since his wife had died, he had taken to cooking and baking and the scents of herbs and flowers and spices and fine food delighted her, mixed with the heady smell of the burning firewood in the den. They fished that day, a hardly traditional expedition for the three, but Cere took to her and the lines on Zach’s face deepened with joy at the prospect of romance.
His poems the next week lacked their brooding flare, but the colourful wordplay and secret meanings were obvious only to two, delighting and teasing as the words ran up Rajani’s spine and down, tickling her. By the point that the last word hung from his lips, she was moving towards him in a hungry stalk, her body begging to be removed from the crowd, or else taken right there in front of them.
They opted for a small hotel room that booked by the hour.
It wasn’t the classiest joint, or the most romantic venue for the tenderness, but all could be easily explained away in the heat of the moment. After all, the maidens in her stories often found themselves befuddled by lust and the romantic desire, she should be no different.
They moved in together not long after that, and soon everything was serene and flowing and another few months down the road she retired from the library and opted to stay home, caring for him and their child. Cooking and cleaning and encouraging his art, posing for him and practicing her own sketches out in the garden as Cere played. Time slowed down and life became comfortable and routine.
It’s hard to pinpoint the turn in her demeanour, but she would imagine it would coincide with a children’s story she began to write. It was childlike and easy to read, but there was a darkness there that frightened Rajani as the words flowed from her graceful hand in their elegant cursive, the curlicue disguising the rape and the deflowerment and the slavery of innocents. She hid the book, far from the City, in a hut she had once lived in towards what was now known as the Ghostlands, encroaching on Amani lands. She buried it, deep below the rotting wood, encased in a heavy iron crate.
And then there was another book tossed on top. And another, each story more depraved, more terrifying. She would plaster a smile on her face every day and explain her trips from home as exploration journeys, seeking in the path of… what, magic? The arcane? It became hard to remember her lies, they were so numerous by this point. She lay in the bed next to him, allowing to pour himself into her, and yet…
He rejected her one night, coolly, as she presented herself to him in something lacy and revealing and expensive, explaining away a headache and a long day. She lay in bed, awake and troubled as he slumbered next to her, his breathing deep and regular. She snuck from the bed and quickly dressed, her clothes were not suited for stealth or quick movement, her wardrobe instead filled with floor length skirts and simple tops. She snuck through the door and called for their horse, moving it with a blurred speed towards the City, towards the darkest depths and the drug addicts and sex fiends and the clubs that proudly proclaimed, simply, “Live Girls!” As opposed to dead ones.
She walked in and paid the fee and sat at the stage and nothing was to happen, but the beat of the music, the gyrating bodies, the skin… oh, the skin. So many tones, so many colours, so many shapes. It all called to her, the smell of the sweat and perfume and liquor reminding her of all the pieces of her she had shovelled into that box in the hut. She didn’t intend for anything. Just to look, to feel the electricity in the air, to smell that heat and energy.
And that was all she did until a diminutive pixie sat in her lap, cropped black hair, azure eyes, high cheekbones and a narrow waist. Narrow hips. Narrow breasts. She was tanned to a dark brown, the colour bringing out her eyes all the more, cheeks topped with golden, sparkly powder. The siren sat in Rajani’s lap and threw her arms around her and whispered in her ear that she couldn’t help but approach and that she really wanted to play and the touch of hard, stolen gold in Rajani’s purse quivering and begging to be exchanged.
Pixie’s ass was soft but small, unmarred by age and she bent down and pleaded with Rajani to spank it and in an eager movement their limbs were entwined in the darkness of the private room, rolling atop of each another on the small and soiled bed, the older woman’s skilful fingers plying and prying and caressing and by the time the gold was gone, they were both dew covered and exhausted.
It became a regular occurrence and Rajani justified it away by convincing herself of the Sapphic nature and the innocence, but still their gold dwindled and it wasn’t long before it all came spilling out in a heated argument after an intrusion into her clumsily hidden journal. He was red faced and loud enough to shake their modest home and when it was done, Zach burned everything she owned.
Rajani ran, then, back to Lorderan, to the Capital City and back to the rebellion and the chaos and the burly men and their grabby hands. It was after the second war by that point and most of the elves had been lead away from the humans by their King. It made no difference to Rajani who she slept with, who grabbed at her, who roughed her up, provided there was gold in her pocket. And, being the exotic little import she was, there was much gold to be found in the human city.
She dared to write Zach once, but received no reply. She longed to go back, to see him once more. She dreamed of watching him read his laments in the poetry class, his face older, his hair speckled with grey, every single strand a fault of hers.
By the third war he had been dead for several years. He had burnt the house, taking Cere with him in his miserable display of self righteous anger and sadness. She never did find out if there was a poem about her.
—
Anjasa flickered her jade eyes open and fluttered the lashes, blinking away the red swollen rim and the threat of tears. They had been happy years. Anjasa slid her hands over the boning of her corset, struggling with her shallow breath as she once more grabbed at the hilt of her daggers. She always seemed to slip from one extreme to another. She looked around Murder Row and frowned at its relative emptiness, lifting herself and moving towards the fountain, curling up in the light and forcing a smile to her stern face.
It was all leading up to something great. No regrets.
So many times was the fabric of her life darned and repaired, sewn and quilted and patched together, holes replaced and filled with new material, that it was taking a prolonged period for Anjasa Vilelight to sort it all out.
Of particular interest to her was in unweaving the rich and intricate lies that she clung to for the third war. The loss of her home, however much her love hate relationship was, affected her deeply. She ran from Capital City towards her abode, fleeing her debts and the life of a whore once more.
And when she finally arrived to the city of her birth, the Scourge was already gone and the city had already fallen. Though she hadn’t always been a faithful servant to it, there was a hole cut through her. She heard of the expedition to Outlands, to Draenor. The path of salvation, and she wanted to flee with them, to save her people but she had looked around at the pain and devastation and decided she would rather die within Quel’danas. And that was, indeed, her plan. She felt old, and tired, and bored of life and sought the embrace of death, though not immediate.
The first few weeks were spent in solitary exploration, visiting the charred remains of Zach’s house, the skeleton of the walls still indented into the ground. She wept for her loss, for her pity, for hurting those that had put so much trust and faith into her, and in that moment of sorrow she was reborn once more.
No more Rajani, the nomenclature falling far from what she was. From the ashes of the sundered and gutted cottage was Kaesa born. Her hair was darkened to soot black and matched the tight leather attire she squeezed herself into, her attitude hard and mean as she walked back into the remains of Silvermoon.
The rebuilding process had just began and people had lost everything, but what was left fell into the hands of the swindlers and those without morals; they fell into the hands of Kaesa. She was a woman made for the art of barter and trade, skilled and experienced in using her body to please her way to a place to sleep for the night or a lavish dinner. Enchanting enough to elicit those few who felt a tenderness towards her to surrender what little belonged to them, she acted without fear and without pity.
But these stories, the actualities of history, had faded. Sure she bartered and traded, but she had done so to help. To aid. To bring Silvermoon to its new glory and not for her own ends. She was a skilled and capable liar, and the stories that Anjasa tells to herself are the most capable of all as well as the most important.
Soon after the rise of the new dawn, the exalted presence of the city, she had gone out on the hunt. The ghostlands were overwhelmed with discarded houses, her own battered and worn hut among them. She decided, for one reason or another, that she should retrieve her books and on the way there, through the wreckage and nerubians, she happened upon a hard shelled spider, eyes glowing red.
She dodged and ducked and darted and stabbed until she staggered backwards into long and muscular blue arms. He pinned her to him and dealt the fatal blow to the scourge beast, his breathing hard and hot on her ear. The words had faded, as all conversation is wont to do in time, but she knew the feeling.
Her heart seized in her chest, fear washing over her and instead of the customary shiver and weakening in the knees, she became readied. Her breathing became faster, harder, chest beating with excitement and anticipation as she moved in his pliable hands, yielding her prized possession to him.
It had been years… decades? Longer? since she had known the touch of a troll, of the blue skin slamming into her tanned behind, shaking her and paining her to the core, pummelling with no concern. She flopped like a rag doll about the powerful man and when he was spent she conceded the loss to him in the smarmiest of fashions, talking him out of killing her as she titillated him with the delights of having a delicate accomplice.
So began the partnership of Kaesa and Raej, the two monsters feeding upon one another, struggling in their torment and delighting in the most hedonistic of pleasures. And should Kaesa be killed, she begged it be from Raej’s hand, for though she was a monster, she was too cowardly to take her own life, too tormented by her past and too excited by her present was she able to see another future. There was no hope for her kind.